


Not Alone in Fear

by umadoshi (Ysabet)



Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: Adopted Sibling Incest, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Not quite PWP, POV Female Character, POV First Person, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:05:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysabet/pseuds/umadoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how bad things are, sometimes you need a distraction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Alone in Fear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhiteLadyoftheRing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteLadyoftheRing/gifts).



> This Treat is set fairly late in _Feed_ (between ch. 22 and 23); no series spoilers past that point. I think it's walking the line between "Mature" and "Explicit", so the rating errs on the side of caution.

Shaun walked up behind me while I was working, as if he were going to read over my shoulder, but instead of bending down to see my screen he dragged his fingernails across my collarbone, snagging them a little on my bra strap. "You need to cut those," I said automatically. He keeps his nails smooth, but if I could feel any edge instead of calloused fingertips, they were too long.

"Yeah, I know." His hand settled into the crook of my neck, rubbing in a way that was more sussing out my tension level than actually massaging. While he was at it, he tapped his thumb twice on the back of my neck. The rubbing was a mood indicator; the tapping was an actual question. _Do you have any feeds running?_

A few keystrokes later, the answer was "no": no cameras, no audio. Without Buffy there to do the daily sweep for bugs I didn't feel _quite_ as secure as I would have a few weeks earlier, but then, since her death I hadn't felt secure about anything. As far as we could possibly tell, it was really just the two of us.

Shaun dropped to his knees beside my chair, swiveling it--and me--just enough that he could rest his head on my lap. "You're tense as hell," he said, without any preamble. "Want me to get you off?"

He meant it exactly the way it sounded, which never fails to amuse me. We're probably not much different from most people in some ways; we have sex that's lighthearted and sex that's a desperate attempt to get all the way inside each other and everything in between. What I suspect is less normal is Shaun's habit of simply deciding I need an orgasm or three and offering it to me as casually as he'd offer to get me a drink or some painkillers, the only apparent difference in his mind being that those things don't turn him on.

Well, that and what it does to me. I'm always willing to hug him or hold him when he needs it, which usually serves to remind me that I've been needing it too, but he has an understandable soft spot for the way I melt into him for a good five minutes after he makes me see stars. "Are you after de-stressing me or getting snuggled?" I asked.

He nuzzled my thigh, unperturbed. "Snuggles and orgasms are like peanut butter and chocolate, George. Best together, but both still great on their own."

"So you haven't quite hit the point where I'm not hugging you enough and it's starting to make you crazy, huh?"

Nuzzling turned into a kiss, muffling his reply. "I'll let you know before that happens."

"As long as you don't let me know by wrapping yourself around me like a sloth in your sleep."

"I'll try to restrain myself." I could feel his sigh through the fabric of my pants. "I'm just gonna point out--again--that if you were wearing a skirt you wouldn't even have to get up for me to go down on you."

"Like I'd let you do that in the middle of this room."

He grinned up at me in a way that said he'd noticed how my body was reacting to the suggestion. "Hey, I like to be sure you know all your options."

"I'm pretty sure I know my options, unless you changed the menu without telling me." I put my hands against his cheek and shoulder and pushed him back, giving myself enough room to slide off the chair and onto his lap.

"No changes lately," he said, wrapping his arms around me. "Rick won't be back from interviews for a while. We should be clear."

"Then I'd like a full-course meal." I brushed my lips along his jaw, too lightly to be a proper kiss, and smiled at the way his head lolled. Honestly, we'd both benefit from getting our minds off everything for a while. "If we're making time, we should make time to do it right."

\----

A good thing about hotels--one of the things that, according to our parents, is the diametric opposite of how things used to be--is that, if they're properly licensed, they're phenomenally clean. They can be licensed if they're in terrible repair, with flickering lights and creaking beds and questionable hot water, or if every other aspect of the service is lousy, but you'd better believe every last surface gets sterilized within an inch of its life.

It's a nice thing to know when--just as an example--you're up against a bathroom wall being methodically kissed from head to toe.

A lot of folks, when they're planning hotel sex, are probably thinking things like "Can we afford a suite with a jacuzzi?" Shaun and I have more practical concerns, other than on the rare occasion when it's just the two of us traveling. If there's even a chance that someone will come looking for us, the main room is out of the question. (We've been known to set alarms for four in the morning, on the theory that if anyone looks for us then they'll understand if it takes us a few minutes to answer. Sometimes losing an hour or two of sleep in the middle of the night is worth it.) But the bathroom gives us things to hold on to and immediate access to the shower, and if someone comes knocking, it means only one of us needs to get dressed and look presentable in a hurry. Whichever of us isn't scrambling for clothes can go straight into the shower and wander back out into the main room five minutes later, squeaky clean and ready to be filled in on whatever needs our attention.

It would be better if either of us were the obvious choice for always answering the door, but we can get dressed at about the same speed, and it takes nearly as long for me to stop looking flushed as it does for Shaun to talk his hormones and hard-on down. It's irritating, since I pride myself on being able to look professional at the drop of a hat, but Shaun insists on being smug that it takes me a few minutes to banish what he calls my "freshly fucked" expression.

There's a reason I call him names.

But for the most part, we've got it down to a science. We usually can't replace the white light bulbs in bathrooms, but a flashlight with a medium-weight shirt tossed over it is enough for Shaun to see by without hurting my eyes, as long as the beam isn't directly pointed at us. It's an important consideration, since he prefers being able to see my eyes, and my contacts don't count--which is an understatement, since he flatly refuses to have sex at all if I'm wearing them.

I've tried teasing him about that--Shaun Mason spends his days playing with dead things but can't handle blue eyes?--but his counterargument is that finding creepy things _fun_ is worlds away from creepy things being a turn-on. He wins that round: I've decided it's better not to have conversations that result in my being compared to zombies in any way, even if his whole point is that he _doesn't_ find them arousing.

I'll give Ryman's staff this: they didn't skimp when they were putting us up in hotels, possibly to make up for the cramped conditions when we were sleeping in trailers. The accommodations weren't always new or fancy, but the main rooms always had enough space for our servers. The beds were always comfortable. The bathrooms were never claustrophobic, and they came equipped with towels that actually felt good against our skin, which counts for a lot when you go through as many bleach cycles as we do.

I can't say I was paying much attention to things like the soothing colors on the walls of this particular room, or the fact that the fixtures managed to be both functional and attractive in a way that's so rarely achieved. When I give Shaun the chance to distract me from my stress levels, he takes full advantage of it.

He'd worked his way down from kissing my throat and cheerfully arranged me to his liking once he was on his knees in front of me, hooking one of my legs over his shoulder and using one hand to help me stay steady. He was putting the other hand to much better use while he blanketed my thighs with soft, open-mouthed kisses, as if we had all the time in the world.

I braced myself against the sink and used _my_ other hand to touch his head, clenching my fingers into his hair. The sound he made when I tugged was a mixture of laughter and lust; Shaun likes teasing me during sex every bit as much as he likes teasing me in other ways, and he enjoys it even more when I can't help being impatient.

All that aside, we really _didn't_ have all the time in the world. He took the hint and got down to business, entirely comfortable letting me use the weight of my hand on his head to show him exactly where I wanted his attention and his mouth from moment to moment. He's a lot better than I am about verbal guidance when I'm returning the favor, which is useful; I just don't understand how he's capable of forming sentences at that point. God knows I'm not, not when he's using every trick he knows to make me forget about everything except his mouth and his fingers and how good they make me feel.

For obvious reasons, I've never compared notes about sex with anyone, not counting Shaun. I do sometimes wonder whether some of the things we take for granted are typical, or if they're a result of knowing each other--and only each other--as well as we do. Things like how he doesn't have to be able to talk to use his voice to help get me off; as much as the feel of him humming against me, it's the delighted sounds he makes when he can tell I'm close that set my nerves on fire. Things like how he knows exactly when to reach up and take my hand, giving me something to hold on to when I've stopped being able to string words together.

Shaun always knows, and that's often the first thing I can focus on afterwards: his fingers tangled with mine, letting me squeeze with all my strength while his thumb rubs gentle circles over the back of my hand. That particular touch has nothing to do with sex at all. It's his silent reminder that whatever else he's doing, he's holding on to me as hard as I'm clinging to him.

He'd been doing that for a while after I came, letting me linger as long as possible in the fleeting haze where I didn't have to think at all, before I realized that the wall I'd been staring blankly at was the one he'd been punching in the dead of night. The shallow indentations stared back, mirroring the bruises on the backs of his fingers that no one had asked about. No one had asked us much of anything over the past two weeks; I couldn't help hoping that would extend to no one asking why the wall would need repair after we checked out.

I couldn't make myself care about the damage, other than what it said about the damage Shaun was doing to himself, and I wasn't about to tell him to stop. He needed to get his grief and anger out somehow, and any other way I could think of was worse.

That didn't keep my chest from aching when I looked at it. Shaun was trying so hard to give me what I needed, but what _he_ needed was about a week of unbroken sleep, a lot of hugs, and some uncomplicated fun. I couldn't give him any of that--not even hugs in the quantity he really needed, not with my own nerves rubbed so raw from stress and exhaustion.

I got both of my feet back under me and slid down the wall to lace my fingers behind his neck and pull him close. Cuddling up to him properly before he finished stripping--unlike me, he was still half dressed--wasn't the best idea; he'd gotten me thoroughly wet even before his tongue had gotten in on the action, and he might need those pants again in a hurry.

Instead, I pressed my forehead against his, waiting for our breathing to sync before I kissed him. When he kissed me back, there was a raw hunger in it that was strangely comforting: _that_ , I could take care of. "Whatever we're doing next, you should get naked," I told him.

Shaun laughed, pulling me up with him when he stood. We traded speculative looks while he ditched his pants. I've been admiring his body for almost a decade and have had plenty of hands-on experience for all but a few of those years, but I'm not tired of looking. Shaun works out, but he spends the majority of his physical training time on agility and speed. He's muscled like a martial artist, not a bodybuilder, and it shows in how he moves. How could I _not_ love watching him, or not go weak in the knees when he's turned on and looking back at me the same way?

He glanced past me to the wall I'd been leaning on. "There?" he asked. I nodded agreement and he reached for me, reeling me in tight before he dropped his hands to my hips and hoisted me up as easily as if I were bird-boned like Buffy.

Practice made maneuvering easy--I had my legs around his waist by the time he'd half-pinned me against the wall, distributing my weight so he could keep me there and still move. That familiarity didn't change how good it felt when he pushed into me, or how my spine arched when he groaned in my ear. "Fuck, George..."

"Yes, please," I said, biting his lip lightly on my way into a kiss that deepened fast when we settled into a rhythm. Gentle kisses are for when we have more time to indulge ourselves; with that time, in that mood, he might have me in the exact same position and it would be completely different. We were both missing that lately, but this was good too, all heat and dizziness, demanding responses from each other that we were both happy to give.

He kissed me hard until the urge to see my face properly won out and made him lean back to watch me. I think his enjoyment of looking into my eyes during sex has less to do with some hidden romantic streak than with how rarely he gets to see them at all. I like it too, although in my case it's just part and parcel of seeing him so aroused. I like all of it: the way he breathes; the film of sweat on his skin; how his eyes are more like mine than at any other time, wide-pupiled and almost unblinking.

Really, it's just as well we're not remotely self-conscious together, given the way we stare at each other when we're free to do so. Shaun smirked a little without taking his gaze from mine. "Enjoying the show?"

"I always do." I tightened my hands on his shoulders, applying just the tiniest bit of pressure with my nails. Our odds of having to get bleached and sterilized someplace where there might be cameras are high enough that we don't ever, _ever_ leave any kind of marks on each other.

I'm mostly okay with that, but I have suspicions about what my neck will look like if we're ever in a position for him to safely go to town there. Whoever divided guys into the breasts versus ass camps had a simplistic worldview that doesn't account for things like Shaun's throat fetish. It's just as well for him that he's not into actually biting, because that'd be a lifetime source of vampire jokes right there and I doubt he'd find them as hilarious as I would.

So that's another reason it's good that he gets off on eye contact. It helps distract him from the things he can't do, although it doesn't mean we don't both think about it.

My ear cuff buzzed. Shaun made a put-upon face and adjusted his grip on me, pinning me harder against the wall for support. I pressed one hand to his cheek, thumb against his lips, and tapped the cuff to answer. "Georgia. Make it snappy." Shaun nodded approval of my steady tone, idly shifting against me--not enough stimulation to result in either of us making incriminating sounds, but enough that our bodies wouldn't forget what we were doing.

"It's Rick. When did you want to review my report?"

"Shaun and I are wrapping some things up, and I need a shower. Let's say half an hour?"

"Sure. See you in a bit." Rick hung up without even a token attempt at finding out what his bosses were up to, which probably meant he'd ask when he got to our room, but we could worry about that then.

Shaun touched his lips to mine, as much a check-in as a kiss, and met my smile with one of his own. His movement inside me was shallower now, but faster, hitting exquisite places with each thrust. "That's good," I said, starting to lose focus again. Sometimes focus is overrated. "God, you feel good." I forced my eyes to stay open, meeting his; he was closer to coming than I was, and the look on his face sent a wash of fresh heat down my spine. "Just like that," I told him. "Come on, Shaun, let me feel it--"

He came _hard_ , still staring into my eyes while he shuddered against me. He didn't say my name until afterwards, practice letting him sink to his knees without letting go of me at all. With his forehead heavy against mine, he pulled out of me and slipped his fingers in instead.

Shaun's good at thinking in angles and trajectories. He's an excellent shot with so many firearms because he works for it, but there's a level of intuition there that no amount of training can account for. That same knack meant he didn't have to ask or fumble to find the exact same angle with his fingers, rubbing them hard inside me in just the right place. It got me off again so abruptly that he was still glassy-eyed and shaky from his own orgasm while he watched me come. I watched him back, hardly breathing, the pair of us caught in a shivering feedback loop of wanting and being wanted.

Our time constraints were too tight to be ignored. I still curled up against him while I came down, burrowing my face against his neck while my muscles stopped trembling. We couldn't go out into the bedroom and spend another hour doing it all again, slowly this time, but we could take a minute to be a sticky, exhausted mess together.

"When the campaign's over," he said, talking into my hair, "I'm keeping you in bed for a whole week."

I forced my thoughts into a semblance of organization. "I assume you mean after we find our own place."

"Yeah."

"And by 'for a whole week' you mean until you get bored."

"You'd get bored faster."

" _I_ can work in bed," I reminded him.

"Shush," he said, sounding utterly serene. "Want me to be the responsible one for a change?" I mumbled agreement against his skin, and he sighed. "Into the shower, George. Rick's gonna be here in less than twenty minutes."

"Okay." But first I sat back and brought one of his hands to my mouth, locking my gaze on his while I kissed the bruises we were so carefully not talking about. It wasn't desire that made his breath catch, but it wasn't something far off. We can pretend not to notice things about each other, but only as long as we're pretending together. That didn't keep him from needing me to see what he was doing, because otherwise I wouldn't be seeing _him_.

I kissed acknowledgement across his knuckles and pressed another kiss to his temple before I stood, cradling his face between my hands. "We'll get through all of this," I said, as quietly as I could while still being sure he could hear me. "I'm right here. We'll be okay."

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from Vienna Teng's "The Atheist Christmas Carol".


End file.
